Kelsey Smith

Hometown

Education

Lab Association

Hobbies and Interests

Reading, Swimming and Science Fiction

Research

Kelsey is studying genetic contributions to stress-related psychiatric disorders including depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She has been investigating the functional role of genetic variation in the pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) 1 receptor and its regulatory role for resting-state brain activity in adolescents at increased risk for depression. She has also begun to examine the role of epigenetics (DNA methylation) on gene regulatory networks in PTSD using human postmortem studies and will extend this work to epidemiologic and clinical cohorts. Her research is utilizing a combination of technologies including sandwich ELISA, rtPCR, qPCR, whole-genome microarray, and NextGen sequencing. Her graduate studies are focused within a translational neuroscience framework and will include pre-clinical as well as population-based clinical samples to discover and validate the role of genetics in stress-related conditions.